Greek bailout campaign passes €1m on Indiegogo

The campaign promises rewards for backers, including olives, feta cheese and ouzo

A crowdfunding campaign to bailout Greece has passed €1.3m (£952,000) as it attempts to raise enough money to pay off the country's debt to the IMF.

To date more than 77,000 people have donated to the Greek Bailout Fund, although it is still some way off its €1.6bn (£1.13bn) goal. The crowdfunding effort, which has only been running for four days, is the work of Thom Feeney, a 29-year-old shoe shop worker living in Bethnal Green, London.

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Earlier this week the campaign took crowdfunding website Indiegogo offline at least twice as people rushed to donate. During the first period of downtime Indiegogo tweeted that it was "experiencing connectivity issues due to overwhelming worldwide interest" in the campaign.

Feeney said he started the Greek Bailout Fund as he was "fed up" with "dithering politicians". "This isn't just about Greece, but about the Greek people, the working classes and trying to help other ordinary people across the world," he explained on the Indiegogo page.

"The European Union is home to 503 million people, if we all just chip in a few Euro then we can get Greece sorted and hopefully get them back on track soon", Feeney claimed.

The campaign promises rewards for backers, including olives, feta cheese, ouzo and postcards featuring Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras. Feeney said producing these items in Greece would be a further boost to its economy. "I sincerely hope that in the coming weeks I, and hundreds of Greeks, will be employed in wrapping bottles of ouzo and sending postcards of Alexis Tsipras out to people who have donated," he wrote on The Guardian.